COMM 150, 337: Dogging the watchdog ... Trib's dirty laundry aired in public

Content advisory: Language quoted in some of the links below may be offensive to some readers.

What's wrong with newspapers these days? New York Times media critic David Carr's story on a pre-pubescent corporate culture at The Chicago Tribune details a lot of what's going wrong at the Trib. But it also, in my opinion, shows something that's going wrong with the Times.

Carr's story came out Wednesday, and it created quite a stir among people who regularly follow the Tribune Co., which owns not only the Trib but also The Los Angeles Times and other media properties. It was acquired by real estate wheeler-dealer Sam Zell in 2007 and went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy about a year later.

Carr mentions that, but he focuses more on changes that Zell's new CEO, Randy Michaels, brought to the Trib's corporate culture.

... Based on interviews with more than 20 employees and former employees of Tribune, Mr. Michaels’s and his executives’ use of sexual innuendo, poisonous workplace banter and profane invective shocked and offended people throughout the company. Tribune Tower, the architectural symbol of the staid company, came to resemble a frat house, complete with poker parties, juke boxes and pervasive sex talk.

A lot of it is shocking, at least if you consider the antics of middle-aged men acting like 13-year-old boys shocking, and some of it goes deeper into Zell's questionable dealings with former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, as Illinois state government blogger Rich Miller pointed out. But it's heavily based on anonymous sources, and I'm going to take a wait-and-see attitude until - unless would be a better word here - others from the Trib come forward to corroborate more of it. The bits about Blagojevich were on the record, by the way, and they came from a former editor who now does community relations for the University of Chicago (Michelle Obama's old job), so they're good as gold. And they're substantive. On some of the rest of it, however, I think national political blogger Mickey Kaus of Newsweek nails it:

Here's $100. Show Us Your Hits! I wish the NYT's David Carr, in his long-awaited takedown of Sam Zell's managment of the Tribune media company, had spent more time documenting the business missteps of Tribune executives and less time detailing their piggish frat boy shenanigans. ...

I'm not saying Zell's Tribune execs, who come largely from radio, are good execs. I hear they're not, at least when it comes to newspapers. I'm saying Carr didn't show what was wrong with them—because he was distracted by exactly the sort of prurient sex-over-substance fixation L.A. Times twits traditionally worry about (but in this case have embraced) . . . [elipses in the original]

So ... the story does show what's going on at the Trib. At least in its main outlines, altho' some of the giggly who-did-what-to-whom stuff lacks corroboration. But in my judgment, it also shows the New York Times emphasizing fluff over substance.

Other reaction:

Phil Rosentha's media blog post in the Trib is an interesting document, both for what it says and what it doesn't say. Headline: "Tribune Co. CEO Michaels: 'Ignore the noise' of NY Times story." That sums up the tone of the thing. Good links (altho' none, for some reason, to The Chicago Sun-Times).

Another good set of links is put up by Los Angeles media blogger Kevin Roderick, who noted - accurately - Carr's is "the kind of story that gets media types across the country tweeting late into the night" but added little else.

A pretty informative post by Whet Moser in The Chicago Reader, an alternative newspaper that keeps a close eye on The Trib and The Chicago Sun-Times, that suggests "its value is more gathering what's already known (aside from a handful of seamy new accusations) and laying it out as an indictment. Anyone who's been following the saga will be unsurprised ..."

Another post in The Reader, this one by Michael Miner, with CEO Michaels' statement and this nugget, which leads the item: "UPDATE: Most updates go at the bottom of posts. I'm putting this one at the top because I don't want anyone to miss it. Down below there's mention of a 'consensual sexual act' on a balcony of Tribune Tower. The rumor of this act circulated widely within the building. I just spoke with someone in the Tower, an old hand, who's a friend of the rumored fellationista. She 'categorically' denied it happened, and her friend, who's no fool, believes her. OK, that's for what it's worth."

Michaels' statement was carried without comment, balanced by summaries of the New York Times story, in Crain's Chicago Business and Radio Ink, a trade mag that covers radio. Michaels' background is in radio.